It's a long-shot, but is anyone (or know anyone(s) who would) be interested in joining me on the ridiculous adventure of the Mongol Rally in 2010? Fairly likely we can get a spot.
For those not familiar, the Mongol Rally is an absolute batshit crazy plan whereby you start in London and drive to Mongolia, during which hilarity ensues.
Companion(s) should have a sufficient set of these improbable qualities (in no particular order):
financially solvent;
crazy;
willing to commit with 51%+ certainty before Saturday;
flexible work schedule; and
resourceful to an almost inhuman level.
To be clear: I am serious. Roadtrips are serious business, even in Central Asia.
I'm in need of work; I'm down to less than half-time consulting schedule at this point, and have basically been looking for full-time work. Anyway, looking for:
Embedded programming (C/assembly for whatever random architecture is cool lately)
Mostly been interviewing on the operations side 'cause that's where my recent experience is, but I'm finding my skills are an odd match for most ops jobs (ie running java websites)
Unexpected view from my bed this morning: wide view of Lago Nahuel Huapi.
Bariloche is like Valparaíso de Chile meets tacky Swiss Alpine village. Obviously this hostel has some mid-century modern thrown in for good measure.
Whole town sits at like a 35deg angle on the side of a mountain next to a glacial lake -- a discription which immediately concludes: global warming flood risk!
Threw a system-wide red flag at exactly 5pm on a weekday!
Also, anybody else having major problems with TransLink lately? It's been taking multiple attempts at the turnstiles lately, and takes 15 sec to authorize when it does work.
The last few months I've been joking that I'm confident staying with E*trade as my primary bank+brokerage because they're so experienced at teetering on the edge of collapse. They've been doing it for years! Lately their insistence of their non-failure has been taken up a notch though. Every other month is an email dedicated to discussing their solvency, and pretty much every email about anything else includes something like this:
Please be assured that this decision has nothing at all to do with the financial health of E*TRADE FINANCIAL, which has been, and continues to be, very well capitalized by every applicable regulatory standard.
They pretty much have to justify and/or apologize for their every action now, but I suppose most banks are doing that these days.
(This particular email was about how they're closing down their proprietary index funds, which had barely any humans involved and therefore have exceptionally low loads. Of course I own a decent amount of them, so this is kinda annoying...)
Ok so the technical quality is uh not up to my usual elitist standards, but this is seriously my favourite video posted to flickr to date. (from xaosenkosmos like a month ago but I've watched it enough times that it seems worth sharing!)
Anyway, I don't make real posts anymore. How are you, internets?
Really should wear contacts on cold rainy days when I'm craving udon. If I have to take my glasses off to eat, I can't also read wikipedia on my iPhone!
Walked in my building this afternoon and found this sight. For a second I thought the killer tomatos were back once again to exact their revenge!
On an economic note, this is the second person this week moving out because they can no longer afford this building. (Crumbling economy and epic drought... 2009 is great!)
Hello internets. Did you know New York is cold this time of year? It's the warmest day since I've been here and I still have snot crystals in my beard.
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